The next entry in our Show Us Your City call out comes from Louise Hawson, who is sub­mit­ting her blog, 52 Sub­urbs, as her entry. Read our inter­view with Louise and start think­ing about how you could show us your city too…

“Bridging the gap” from the Auburn series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Louise says 52 Sub­urbs was born from her “incess­ant need to explore”: after liv­ing in Sydney for over 30 years, she was sur­prised that she hadn’t vis­ited most of the 637 sub­urbs which make up this sprawl­ing city. Louise aims to visit one  sub­urb every week (hence the name), doc­u­ment­ing the unique char­ac­ter and diversity of the many com­munit­ies which form the city. As a writer and an aspir­ing pho­to­grapher, Louise shares her exper­i­ences through beau­ti­ful dip­tychs which (quite lit­er­ally) jux­ta­pose the vibrant cul­tures she encoun­ters on her journeys.

Cre­at­ive Cit­ies: Can you tell us how 52 sub­urbs was born?

Louise Hawson, 52 Sub­urbs: I’m not sure which came first – a need to explore my own city or a desire to start a pho­to­graphic pro­ject. I think they were both mud­dling around in my mind for some time until one day I real­ised they were meant for each other!

“Net” from the Eveleigh series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

The need to explore my own city grew from a real­isa­tion that I knew my little corner of Sydney like the back of my hand but the remain­ing 90% was for­eign ter­rit­ory. There are 600 plus sub­urbs in Sydney, many I’d never even heard of. Worse still, the only impres­sion I had of some sub­urbs was derived purely from the occa­sional neg­at­ive news­pa­per headline.

I decided the only way to find out what most of my city looked and felt like was to go and see for myself. My focus would be to find the beauty in these places, beauty mean­ing old and faded or revital­ized and repur­posed, as well as the beauty of dif­fer­ent people, cul­tures and religions.

“One­ness: 4″ from the Har­ris Park series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

I wanted to share what I dis­covered, what I saw, who I met, by doc­u­ment­ing the sub­urbs pho­to­graph­ic­ally and present­ing them in a blog. I settled on a dip­tych format, com­bin­ing two images side by side, in order to tell mini-stories that are more thought pro­vok­ing or humor­ous than didactic or certain.

Aside from far-flung sub­urbs I’d never vis­ited I also wanted to include sub­urbs I was more famil­iar with but had never really explored. Sub­urbs such as Castlecrag where the beauty doesn’t come from every­day faded sub­ur­bia or mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism but from an extraordin­ary era of architecture.

My over­all aim was to fill in the blanks and build up a pic­ture of Sydney that might be a little more com­plete and accur­ate than just the cliched images of Sydney as beach, har­bour and glam­our­ous people.

I knew I’d need at least a year to do this, vis­it­ing one sub­urb a week – and so 52 Sub­urbs was born!

“Wel­com­ing?” from the Eveleigh series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Cre­at­ive Cit­ies: Vis­it­ors to Sydney rarely see more than the post­card center­pieces of the city — the Har­bour, Bondi Beach, the Rocks — but for most of us, these places don’t reflect every­day life in the city. Is there a “hid­den Sydney” that vis­it­ors don’t get to see? How would you describe it?

Louise Hawson, 52 Sub­urbs: I ima­gine most tour­ists don’t stray far from the har­bour and coast­line and cer­tainly there’s a lot that’s appeal­ing about the typ­ical tour­ist attrac­tions in Sydney. But what they miss out on by not ven­tur­ing bey­ond the post­card pic­ture of the city is pos­sibly more inter­est­ing and closer to the real Sydney. Were they to spend some time away from the har­bour and beaches they’d find them­selves in mini ver­sions of coun­tries as diverse as Tur­key, Lebanon, India, Viet­nam and China.

“Arabic to Zen” from the Auburn series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

This diversity with its mix of cul­tures and reli­gions isn’t without its ten­sions but I won­der what many of Sydney’s sub­urbs would look and feel like without them. Far less vibrant, col­our­ful and tasty I sus­pect. Not ven­tur­ing bey­ond the post­card cliches also means tour­ists miss out on some amaz­ing pub­lic spaces in Sydney, such as the many inspir­ing mar­riages of old and new — Balmain’s Bal­last Point Park, Pad­ding­ton Reser­voir and Eveleigh’s Car­riage­works to name a few.

“the world turned orange” from the Castlecrag series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Cre­at­ive Cit­ies: Sydney is one of the most multi-cultural cit­ies in the world and your blog reflects that, as you identify the migrant com­munit­ies that have made cer­tain parts of our city into their homes. What have your jour­neys into the sub­urbs shown you about the inclus­iv­ity (or oth­er­wise) of the city in wel­com­ing newcomers?

Louise Hawson, 52 Sub­urbs: I get the impres­sion there are mixed feel­ings about migrant com­munit­ies in Sydney sub­urbs. Many regard the diversity as a pos­it­ive thing but for oth­ers, espe­cially older ‘ori­ginal’ res­id­ents, it’s not neces­sar­ily all good. For example, I met a woman in Auburn who’d lived all her life in that sub­urb and had seen it trans­form from middle-class “white Aus­sies” to the mul­ti­cul­tural melt­ing pot it is now. She told me she had many Lebanese friends and didn’t have any prob­lems with dif­fer­ent cul­tures. How­ever, because the sub­urb had changed so rad­ic­ally, she felt a loss of iden­tity – there weren’t many of ‘her’ left.

“The Imam and the faith­ful” from the Auburn series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Over­all though, the fact that dif­fer­ent com­munit­ies have been able to thrive and ‘own’ cer­tain sub­urbs, set­ting up home, shop and place of prayer, surely reflects a pretty good accept­ance of difference.”

“it’s not that black and white” from the Bondi series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Cre­at­ive Cit­ies: As you would know after your many jour­neys, Sydney suf­fers from ser­i­ous urban sprawl, with a rel­at­ively small pop­u­la­tion spread across an enorm­ous dis­tance. How do you think this affects the exper­i­ence Sydney­siders have of their city? Do you think it affects the sense of com­munity in a place?

Louise Hawson, 52 Sub­urbs: I sup­pose it must deter people from explor­ing their own city when everything is so spread out. How­ever, I sus­pect most people in major cit­ies around the world suf­fer from the same prob­lem, urban sprawl or not – the tend­ency to get stuck in their own patch, trav­el­ling the same roads, meet­ing the same sorts of people.

To me, the most dom­in­ant fea­ture of Sydney is the thing that unites com­munit­ies — the divi­sion between those who live on the coast­line and those in the west. I think there’s some truth to the cliché that people in the coastline-hugging east­ern sub­urbs regard the west­ern sub­urbs as unap­peal­ing and those in the sub­urbs think the east­ern sub­urbs are pop­u­lated by the unappealing!

“Skin Deep” from the Black­town series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Cre­at­ive Cit­ies: What are your own favour­ite places in Sydney? Are there any pub­lic spaces in the city that you con­sider remark­able, and why?
Louise Hawson, 52 Sub­urbs: My list of favour­ite places has grown a great deal since I began 52 Sub­urbs. For example, I loved Auburn, Har­ris Park and Cab­ra­matta. Older favour­ites include the semi-industrial har­bour areas and sub­urbs such as Potts Point and Clovelly.

From the Auburn series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Pub­lic spaces I think are pretty amaz­ing include: Pad­ding­ton Reser­voir, for the invent­ive­ness of the space; Bal­last Point Park in Bal­main, an incred­ible mix of old and new; and North Sydney Swim­ming Pool where you can gaze up while swim­ming back­stroke at the under­belly of one of the world’s iconic struc­tures, the Sydney Har­bour Bridge.

“Lighten up (Nich­olas Elias, a sym­bolic inscrip­tion of the ima­gin­ary)” from the Bondi series | Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Do you have a story to share? Show us your city for the chance to win a trip to the Lon­don Fest­ival of Archite­cure 2010!